ow could anyone doubt that the world has an
overpopulation problem? Every school-child

3000 AD Green Party wins power.Photo showing the complete success of their policies.

knows that in the face of a recklessly expanding population
food is becoming scarcer and scarcer. Here is the ghost of
Robert Malthus (the early 19th century population theorist)
speaking through a book for children:

"When man first began to farm, there were fewer than five
million people on earth, and it took more than a million
years for the population to reach that figure. But
populations increase geometrically - that is, they double
(2,4,8,16,32,etc). Food supplies, in contrast, increase only
arithmetically, a much slower process (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12,
etc) ...

"If the population continues to explode, many people will
starve. About half of the world's population is underfed
now, with many approaching starvation."

(Fichter, The Golden Stamp Book of Earth and Ecology,
Racine, Wis. Western Pub. 1972, pp 24-25)

Yes, as obvious and inescapable as 2+2=4. Right? Wrong.
Recent trends in demographic theory are very critical of such
models of population growth. Optimism is in the air.

But still the citadel of orthodoxy stands. One of its principal
architects was Paul Ehrlich. Ehrlich had a taste for the dramatic.
To this he added a flair for picking figures out of thin air and -
abracadabra: "... a minimum of ten million people, most of them
children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s."
(The Population Bomb, Ballantine Books 1968, p3). The
prestigious Club of Rome is almost equally to blame. They
shared Ehrlich's taste for tragedy but did not fancy themselves
as magicians. Instead, they wheeled in an impressive computer
and voila:

"If the present growth trends in world population,
industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource
depiction continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this
planet will be reached sometime within the next one
hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather
sudden and uncontrolled decline in both population and
industrial capacity.'

(D.L. Meadows, The Limits to Growth, 1972, p23).

Malthus and his Ghost

This is the Malthusian ghost. But it is not Malthus. The
'Neomalthusians' are wrong to invoke Malthus' name to give
authority to their case. This is just verbal necromancy. It has
obscured the original problem and how it has changed.

The 'Neomalthusians' see no current constraints on growth but
only ultimate limits. The exact reverse of Malthus! Further-
more, for the Neomalthusians, it is axiomatic that the human
population grows geometric- ally. This, they insist, is the living
nightmare. But for Malthus this was a utopian dream. The
central problem that Malthus set himself was precisely that the
human population does not grow geometrically, despite the
strong sexual instinct that impells man to this theoretical
maximum. Even the outstanding economist, Milton Friedman,
has mistaken the ghost for the man (Price Theory, p210).
T.W. Hutcheson (On Revolutions and Progress in Economic
Knowledge, C.U.P. 1978, p71) rightly pointed to the difficulty
of pinning down 'the' Mathusian position. But that population
does not grow geometrically was something that Malthus
himself never contradicted.

Malthus' argument was not based on the premise of an
ultimate limit to the Earth's resources: "No limits whatever are
placed to the productions of the Earth; they may increase
forever and be greater than any assignable quantity."
(T.R.Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population,
Penguin 1979, p76) Rather he was concerned with a disparity
in the maximum rates of population growth and food
production. Compare the arithmetical and geometrical series in
the quotation from the childrens book: 2,4,6,8, 10, 12;
2,4,8,16,32. They begin to diverge at the third term, before
which population grows unconstrained. In the quotation this
point is placed in the future. But Malthus placed it in the past,
long before any recorded history. Beyond this point population
growth had to conform to the ceiling set by the growth of food.
Hence population grows at most arithmetically.

The quotation contradicts Malthus in two other important
respects. First, from his point of view, if half of mankind had
been underfed for a significant time, far from exploding, the
population would not grow at all (Ibid. p77). The misery of
inadequate food was one of the factors that prevented the
population exceeding the food supply. Second, the human
population does not 'explode', because man's sex drive is
restrained by reason. Although Malthus thought that sex within
marriage is unrestrained, he pointed to a number of methods
used outside marriage by which the number of live births are
deliberately controlled. These include celibacy, delayed
marriage, contraception and abortion. Among the reasons for
restraint were (a) care for the welfare of the potential offspring,
(b) fear of being reduced in rank, (c) thought of the extra work
and trouble to support the off-spring. Himes has recently shown
that all societies practice some form of contraception. The
popular idea that most babies in less developed countries must
be unwanted because their parents do not connect birth with
sex or because they cannot control their primitive urges is
nonsense.

Other checks on population were such things as war,
pestilence, and famine. Thus to Malthus, the curate of Albury, a
geometrically expanding population could only have existed in
Eden, where these checks of misery and vice were nowhere to
be seen.

Conquest of Poverty

We can commend Malthus for his sober methodological
individualism. He was right to give human choice and foresight a
central place in demographic theory. He would have been right
also to regard the unexpectedly rapid expansion of the
population since his day as the victory of man over necessity.
He did think that poverty was a necessity, however, and in this
he could not have been more wrong.

Except perhaps for the labour theory
of value, Malthus' theory has the
unique distinction of being not only the
most influential but also the most
thoroughly refuted theory in the history
of social sciences. The central
implications of the theory are:

(1) The theoretical maximum growth
rate of population is greater than the
theoretical maximum growth rate of food.

(2) The long-term growth rate of food and population must be
equal.

As Thomas Sowell points out (Classical Economics
Reconsidered, P.U.P. 1974, p 87), since nearly all animals and
plants reproduce in much shorter periods of time and with more
numerous offspring than man, the theoretical maximum growth
rate of food is of a higher geometric order than that of the
human population. The second proposition cannot be rescued
because it is dead and buried under an avalanche of historical
data. Thanks to the emergence in England and Holland of a
more efficient system of property rights, in which Crown and
guild restrictions were reduced and intellectual property
restored, real per capita income in these countries generally
increased from about two hundred years before Malthus wrote,
right up to the present day (D.C.North and R.P.Thomas, The
Rise of the Western World, C.U.P. 1973, pp 1 16-7).
Between the end of the 17th century and the outbreak of the
First World War, per capita income in England increased 6 fold
(the absolute increase in production was 30 to 50 fold, far
outstripping the rate of growth in population). (Long Debate on
Poverty, IEA 1972, p16) Recent world trends reinforce the
refutation. Data published by the US Department of Agriculture
and, ironically, by the United Nations (correctly described by
the Economist in 1952 as "... a permanent institution devoted to
proving that there is not enough food to go around") show that
in the four decades since WWII, world per capita food
production has increased. Even more damaging is the fact that
the birthrate and the food supply may move in opposite
directions in the long term. Malthus insisted that the birthrate
invariably increases when the food supply allows. True, as
income increases from a low level, the birthrate increases. But
there comes a point at which a further increase in income leads
to a decline in the birthrate. The lowest birthrates are in the
more developed countries, where food is most abundant.

Famine through a Crystal Ball

Hands up those who in the 1970s watched each year on
television a minimum of 10 million people starve to death.
Ehrlich's prophecy had two important similarities to the
mumblings of a clairvoyant: (1) It was completely obscure how
the predicted mini- mum figure of 10 million deaths per year
was derived from theory and data - in his more technical book
(Population, Resources and Environment, W.H. Freeman &
Co. 1972, p51) - predictions are couched in terms of mere
feelings. We can only surmise that the figure was discerned in a
cloudy crystal ball that is Ehrlich's head. (2) It was a good
gamble. If one prophesises a disaster and it occurs one is made
famous by a public always fascinated by such coincidences
(despite the fact that, given the number of guesses, they are
almost bound to occur). Yet if the disaster does not occur, one
is likely to be saved from infamy as the one among thousands of
flopped prophecies falls into that oblivion of unremarkable
failures. Scientists will now naturally take Ehrlich less seriously,
and this is the price he must pay. It will be some time, however,
before he falls from grace with the public at large. As the
publication of his and Carl Sagan's book (Nuclear Winter,
Sidgwick & Jackson 1985) shows, where there's a prophet
there's a profit.

What data there is on the incidence of famine over time, is an
occasion for rejoicing, not for an orgy of gloom. Gale D.
Johnson (World Food Problems and Prospects, 1974),
argues that during the last quarter of the 19th century perhaps
20-25 million people died from famine. Adjusting for population
increase, Johnson says, the figure for the third quarter of this
century should have been at least 50 million, and for the quarter
century we are now entering, at least 75 million. But, Johnson
points out, for the entire 20th century to the present, there have
been probably between only 12 and 15 million famine deaths.
Many, if not the majority, were due to deliberate government
policy, official mismanagement, or war - not to serious crop
failure.

Although the immediate cause of the Ethiopian famine is
drought, the disaster would not have occurred if it had not been
for a long history of the factors that Johnson mentions. On the
other hand, there is very little chance that the Ethiopian famine,
tragic though it is, will result in anything more than a small
percentage of the death toll predicted by Ehrlich, and no chance
that it will reverse the trend. Even if this were not true, Ehrlich's
recommendations are baseless. Food consumption in the world
has been making tremendous strides despite the catastrophic
bumbling and brutality of states, the very agencies to which
Ehrlich wants to give more power.

Mathematical Fantasies and the Nature of Growth

Ehrlich has made much of the time it takes a population to
double in size. He computed this from the Rate of Natural
Increase (RNI: the percentage by which a population increases
each year). He chose doubling time in his The Population
Bomb (op.cit.) because it is "... the best way to impress you
(the reader) with numbers." It also makes it easier for Ehrlich to
indulge the tall stories of the British physicist, J.H. Fremlin. The
magic formula for these stories is to pick a doubling time and -
as if people bred like flies - simply project it and conclude that
within a startlingly short time the Earth would be completely
carpeted by a 2,000 storey building packed with people. But as
any demographer worth his salt will tell you, using RNI as a
basis for doubling time will exaggerate the prospects for
population growth if the birthrate has fallen in the recent past;
simply because people tend to have children when they are
young and die when they are old. If people were recently
having smaller families than their parents had, then by the time
they are in their old age there will be a higher proportion of old
people in the population. There will then be both a lower birth
rate and a higher death rate, that is a lower RNI.

In the revised printing of his book (Feb.1971) Ehrlich, referring
to America, made a perfunctory reference to the "... low birth-
rates of the late 1960s, which are being replaced by higher
rates as more post WWII 'baby boom' children move into
reproductive years." (Ibid. p11) What he did not mention, but
was clearly relevant to his appraisal and must have been known
to him, was that the birthrate had been failing since 1955. By
1975 the total number of births was no higher than in 1909.

The failing birthrate was a part of the demographic transition, a
process occurring throughout the more developed world when
Ehrlich wrote his book. Notwithstanding the brief mention it
gets in Ehrlich's book, it is the central event in the recent history
of the human population. In the demographic transition both the
birthrate and the death- rate fell from a high to a low level.

Ehrlich was aware of the demographic transition and even gave
a rudimentary explanation of its second stage, the falling
birthrate:

"As industrialisation progressed, children became less
important to parents as extra hands to work on the farm
and as support in old age. At the same time they became a
financial drag - expensive to raise and educate ... people
just wanted to have fewer children." (Ibid. p8).

Ehrlich was oblivious to the fact that this meant that population
growth was neither explosive nor reckless - ideas that were
essential to his campaign to make population growth seem
frightening and thus pave the way for the state (which of course
is never reckless) to step in and suppress the recklessness.
Unrestrained by this lapse into methodological individualism,
Ehrlich soon stumbled into some gross errors:

"It is important to emphasize, however, that the
demographic transition does not result in zero population
growth, but in a growth rate which in many of the most
important overdeveloped countries results in populations
doubling every seventy years or so. This means, for
instance, that even if most under-developed countries were
to undergo a demographic transition (of which there is no
sign) the world would still be faced by catastrophic
population growth. No growth rate can be sustained in the
long run." (Ibid. p8).

Ehrlich's fears were based on three principal errors:

(1) That the demographic transition was complete in the more
developed countries, and that there was no sign of it in less
developed countries.

(2) That population growth is inherently exponential.

(3) That after the demographic transition the only limits to
population growth are external.

Actually, fertility had already begun to fall in less developed
countries in the middle 1960s, before Ehrlich's book came to
press. The demographic transition in more developed countries
is even now incomplete. In the 1980s the growth rate of the
world population has sunk from 2% to 1.7%. Although fertility
is dropping and in some more developed countries has gone
below the replacement rate, the population will continue to
grow. But the UN now expect that it will stabilise at about 10
billion near the end of the 21st century, and this given only the
behaviour of the population and not external constraints. Ehrlich
could not have envisaged any such possibility. He took it for
granted that the human population naturally grows according to
an exponential curve (he likened it to compound interest). The
mathematics of the process were somehow going to force us
into catastrophe. As we have seen, however, the current
growth rate is a poor guide to future growth. Herman Kahn (in
World Economic Development, Croom Helm Ltd 1970, p70)
points out that it is extremely misleading to think of growth as
exponential. Growth generally follows a logistic curve. More
important, growth slows down for reasons internal to that
which is growing, not as a result of external pressures or
constraints. Far from giving any argument that the growth of the
human population is different to the growth of anything else,
Ehrlich himself pointed to the financial burden of children -
nothing less than the most important internal reason for the
slowing down of population growth. In his obsession with
doubling times, which for him have a life of their own divorced
from human foresight and choice, Ehrlich was blind to this
implication.

Triumph over Death

When the human population is seen as a sort of mathematical
monster, developments that would strike the non-mathematical
as magnificent improvements in man's lot are instead seen as
food for the beast. Ehrlich pointed in horror to the dramatic
reduction in mortality in less developed countries. But exorcised
of the reified mathematics of population growth, the dramatic
reduction of the death rate in less developed countries can be
seen for what it really is: the triumph of medicine. It, in turn, was
made possible only by the economic development of more
developed countries, a process that Ehrlich rejected as 'unfair
exploitation' of less developed countries (LDCS) and as leading
to increased death rates through pollution.

It took the 70 years between 1830 and 1900 for average life
expectancy in Europe to increase from 40 years to 50 years.
Due largely to the development of insecticides and drugs in
more developed countries (MDCS) during the 1940s, the same
increase in LDCs took only 15 years between 1950 and 1965.
Furthermore, increases in life expectancy in LDCs began first in
those which had had the most contact and commerce with
MDCs such as India and Latin America (G.Watkin and
Brandel, "Life Expectancy and Population Growth in the Third
World', Scientific American, May 1982). LDCs took
advantage of the benefits of the economic development of
MDCs without having to wait until they had undergone the
same amount of economic development themselves. The
increase in the average life expectancy in the world right up to
the present has contradicted Ehrlich's prophecy of an increase
in the deathrate, and has also indicated that pollution has not
increased. Confronted by this statistic a sophisticated disciple of
Ehrlich's might try to salvage the prophecy by pointing to the
birth control schemes launched, partly as a result of Ehrlich's
propaganda, in China, India and elsewhere. These, he might
say, saved the world from the increased deathrates that Ehrlich
predicted would occur only in the absence of adequate birth
control. Such a plausible defence, however, would be
balanced precariously on Ehrlich's equivocation: Ehrlich
vacillated between a categorical assertion of coming doom and
a prediction of doom contingent on certain conditions. Thus, in
Population, Resources and Environment, (op.cit. p5) Ehrlich
made the predicted increase in the deathrate contingent on the
growth of the world population being such that its size would
not exceed 5,449,000,000 by the year 2000. However, the
latest estimate from the UN is that by the year 2000 the world
population will be 6.1 billion, and there is still no sign of the
increasing deathrates that Ehrlich expected in the 1970s.

The Club of Rome Creates a Frankenstein's Monster

Surely we cannot but trust that bastion of frank discussion of
the problems facing mankind, the Club of Rome? The whole
import of their book, The Limits to Growth, (op.cit.) was an
urgent call for a halt to economic growth: "We are by no means
the first people to propose some sort of non- growing state for
human society." But they added their voice to the chorus
because, as the Executive Committee of the Club of Rome said:

'We are further convinced that demographic pressure in the
world has already attained such a high level, and is
moreover so unequally distributed, that this alone must
compel mankind to seek a state of equilibrium on our
planet.' (p191).

Global equilibrium entails that:

(1) The birth rate equal the deathrate and the capital investment
rate equals the depreciation rate.

(2) All input and output rates - births, deaths, investment and
depreciation - are kept to a minimum. (p173)

In Chapter V the Club concluded that if stabilising policies with
the above as necessary ingredients are not implemented before
the year 2000, there will he a catastrophic collapse of food
production, industry, and population sometime in the next
century.

They went to great lengths to make the message palatable,
being almost apologetic for suggesting such a course of action,
and even chose the rather exciting term 'Global Equilibrium' to
replace the grey and boring term 'no growth'.

Four years later, after their book had sold 4 million copies, we
find that at a meeting in Philadelphia: "Aurelio Peccie, founder
of the Club of Rome and former manager of Olivetti, denied the
club was a group of advocates of zero growth."

and: "Professor Ervin Laszlo, fellow of the United Nations
Institute for Training and Research, who is directing a study for
the Club of Rome emphasized that... 'The real issue is not
whether to grow or not to grow. Rather it is how to grow: with
what technologies and in what sectors of the economy." (New
York Times, April 14, 1976, pp82-83)

To us simple folk the distinction between 'non-growing' and
'zero growth' is clearly the preserve of the erudite. Perhaps they
changed their minds? Do they now reject that we are
'compelled' to adopt a 'stabilizing policy' before the year 2000 if
we are to avoid catastrophe? Aurelio Peccie explained that it
was not a matter of asserting what they believed was the truth
but of following a strategy to change people's attitudes.

"Aurelio Peccie says that Limits was intended to jolt people
from the comfortable idea that present growth trends could
continue indefinitely. That done, he says, the Club could
then seek ways to close the widening gap between rich and
poor nations - inequities that, if they continue, could all too
easily lead to famine, pollution and war. The Club's
startling shift, Peccie says, is thus not so much a turnabout
as part of an evolving strategy." (Time Magazine, April 26
1976, p43)

If the reversal of the Club's public position on growth was part
of their original plan, then it was intended at the time that Limits
was written that its conclusion would later be denied. We
cannot be sure which position was the lie but one of them must
have been.

Since its revelation several years ago, far from 'startling'
anyone, the Club's pro-growth position has remained almost
completely unknown. The old message lives on unabated. It is
presumed to be the definitive pronouncement of the Club of
Rome in journalistic work right through to supposedly well
researched works such as Global 2000 (1980) (which is
especially puzzling because the director of the study, Gerald
Barney, is a colleague of Peccie's). It would seem that even
such marketing geniuses as the Club of Rome, funded by the
Volkswagen and Xerox corporations, with press conferences
organised by George Kettle Associates, can underestimate the
market for gloom. The development of an ideology cannot be
planned. Ideas have a life of their own. With their computer the
Club of Rome helped to create an ideology of no growth. They
might now feel that their creation is a Frankenstein's monster, an
abomination out of their control. And they would be right.

The New Liar's Paradox

That a prediction is propounded as a lie does not make it false.
The world is not always as it seems, even to a liar. Julian
Simon, whose arguments on population are otherwise
impeccable and whose position is upheld here, made the
mistake of confusing lies with untruths in his criticism of The
Limits of Growth (The Ultimate Resource, P.U.P. 1981, pp
286-288). He saw their mendacity as the 'most compelling
criticism' of their book. But a theorist's bias or mendacity
should never be decisive in rejecting his theory. It is on the
impersonal qualities of truth and coherence that a theory ought
to succeed or founder. The significance of the Club of Rome's
mendacity is that it has impeded the search for the truth, caused
unnecessary worry and despair, and must lead us to conclude
that any further empirical reports from them should be given less
weight in the controversy (not- withstanding that any purely
logical points or criticisms that they might offer are unaffected).
There is a proviso, however: Wilfred Beckerman was correct
when he said (In Defence of Economic Growth, Jonathan
Cape Ltd 1974, p 115) that doomsayers are eventually taken
less seriously as their exaggerated predictions are repeatedly
refuted. But this is not the whole truth; the fate of the dishonest
may be worse. Their empirical data should and will be given
more weight if it undermines the increasing scarcity hypothesis,
just as one might give more weight to a reading on an instrument
that was biased against giving this reading. To the extent that
organisations such as the Club of Rome and the United Nations
have resorted to deception and exaggeration they have
increased their reliability as instruments for the refutation of their
own case.

Such 'evolving strategies' are not uncommon in organisations
devoted to the rescue of mankind. Paradoxically, the more
concerned these self-appointed saviours are with the rescue,
the more cynical and even misanthropic they become. This is
the unacceptable face of philanthropy. It is corrupted by the
theory that ideology is the plaything of expensive advertising
campaigns, plus an obsessive desire to tinker with large
systems. The Club of Rome believed that with the aid of
modern media they could change public opinion how and when
they wanted. But if the media were that powerful Britain would
never have had a Labour government (since most papers are
pro-Conservative), nor would religion still exist in Russia
(where all media are controlled by an anti-religious elite). It is
strange how those who pretend to an enlightened view of the
world that scorns the immediate while embracing the long term
prophecy, are the most short-sighted when it comes to
propaganda. But in propaganda patience and honesty are the
best policy.

The most telling criticism of The Limits to Growth is that the
model on which it is based can produce rosy forecasts with
slight, but realistic changes in the assumptions. The Science
Policy Research Institute at Sussex University concluded: 'The
model appears to be very sensitive to input parameters which
have a wide margin of error and in fact it would appear that
according to World 3 (one set of assumptions), a high rate of
growth is just as likely as a catastrophic collapse.' (H.S.D.
Cole, ed., Models of Doom, 1973, p130) One is reminded of
the computer programmer's acronym, GIGO - garbage in,
garbage out. Herman Kahn (The Next 200 Years, William
Morrow & Co, New York 1976, p 90-91) actually discovered
significant misreporting of data on minerals in work by the Club
of Rome. The Sussex group pointed out that prediction over
such lengthy spans of time is extremely hazardous. A long-term
prediction like the Club of Rome's but made in 1872 would
have completely omitted two of this century's new and
important sources of energy: oil and nuclear power.

One of the crucial assumptions of their model of the world, a
long term increase in the scarcity of minerals, has no historical
backing. As Julian Simon points out, if mineral resources had
indeed become more scarce their prices would have increased.
On the contrary, their prices on average have been sinking since
as long ago as we can ascertain, indicating that they are now
less scarce than they were. There is no reason why minerals will
not get cheaper and cheaper. Furthermore, any shortages will
be anticipated by a rise in the price of the mineral, inducing
suppliers to find new sources of, and substitutes, for the
mineral, and inducing customers to economize on its Use.

Ehrlich and the Club of Rome have somewhat eccentric views,
at least among demographers. So perhaps knocking them down
is not much of a victory. But even the more orthodox and sober
view suffers from flaws that are no less damaging. These flaws
also highlight the weaknesses in Malthus' theory, from which the
orthodox model was largely derived.

Take the now standard model, that of Coale and Hoover. This
model of population has been very influential, and so it is worth
special note. Through Philander Claxton (at one time the highest
ranking US State Department official involved with population
matters) the Coale and Hoover model made birth control an
important part of US foreign aid policy. There were two main
elements to their theory:

(1) An increase in the number of consumers.

(2) A decrease in saving due to population growth.

Their conclusion was that in India income per consumer over
1956-86 could have been expected to rise from an index of
100 to 138 with continued high fertility; whereas it could have
been expected to rise from 100 to 195 with declining fertility -
some 2.5 times as fast. Julian Simon (op.cit. p277) points out
that the result is obtained by (a) ignoring that in the long run a
faster growing population produces a larger labour supply
which implies a larger output, and (b) assuming that capital -
land, machines, etc. - does not increase in proportion with the
labour force, so that there are diminishing returns to labour.
Subsequent models have given more weight to the effect of an
increased labour force, but they still hold on to the 'capital
dilution' assumption.

Even these refined models, Simon points out, are contradicted
by both historical and cross sectional studies. There is no
straight- forward correlation between population growth rate
and per capita income. Strangely, in the light of our
preconceptions, Simon and Gobin found that there is a positive
correlation between population density and per capita income.
(Simon & de Vanzo, eds, Research in Population
Economics, Vol 2, Greenwich, Conn. JAI Pr.) Clearly a more
complex model was needed.

Man - the Ultimate Resource

Julian Simon had the answer. Previous models of population
had seen man mainly as a consumer. Simon saw that man was
"the ultimate resource": he produces more than he consumes.
Simon introduced a number of by now well documented
factors.

There is a positive effect of an increased demand from a larger
population upon business and agricultural investment. Larger
demand makes possible larger, and therefore more efficient,
manufacturing plants, and also longer production runs with
consequently lower set up costs per unit output. A much larger
scope for division of labour is also made possible by a larger
demand, increasing output still further. Many services, because
they are demanded by such a small proportion of the
population, could not be supported by a smaller population
(how many novelists or osteopaths could be supported by a
village?). An extremely important economy of scale derives
from 'learning by doing'. The more TV sets are produced by
workers, the more efficiently they can make them.

With a larger population there are more minds to contribute to
advances in knowledge and its application to production.
Scientific output is proportional to population size, in countries
at the same level of income. The US is much larger than
Sweden, and it produces much more scientific knowledge. So
why aren't India and China the most advanced countries in the
world? The reason is that since they are poor they cannot
afford to educate as many people. Contrary to popular
wisdom, Simon and A.M.Pilarski found that the greater
proportion of children in the population of less developed
countries only slightly reduces the amount of education their
children get (Review of Economics and Statistics, 61, 1979,
pp572-84). Despite its poverty, India does have one of the
largest scientific communities in the world, and mainly because
of its large population.

As Simon has shown, man himself is the ultimate resource. Not
just his muscle power; his brain power too. Ideas about how to
produce things are wonderful tools: they never wear out. In fact
the more they are used the more useful they become, as they
are adapted to circumstances and become consolidated in
people's memories. Scientific theories are more wonderful still.
This is something that Simon has not brought out fully. While a
type of machine may become uneconomic, a scientific theory
can go on helping production forever (though as the very
general ideas of the lever and the wheel show, a technological
idea can carry on contributing to production for an indefinitely
long period after the inventor has died; a clear example of
someone producing more than they consume). It is not just that
the theory, say, of atomic fission, can carry on helping the
construction of the same type of fission reactor.

As Karl Popper has pointed out, any theory has an infinite
number of implications. We can infer from this that the number
of different technological applications of a scientific theory is in
principle infinite. Similarly, abstract ideas like the wheel and the
lever - because of their abstractness - can be realized in a literal
infinity of machines.

A growing population brings with it more Edisons and Einsteins,
who create more and more of these splendid tools of the mind.
They pile up to form a mountain of wealth that is available for
the use of future generations, whose problems are thus made
more amenable to solution. No baby Edison ever deprives a
future person of an ounce of bread, but makes him richer and
more secure instead.

A popular nightmare is of more and more farmers scratching a
living out of an ever dwindling supply of land. But in an
economic sense, land is not a fixed resource. Increases in
demand spur people to increase the stock of usable land and to
work more intensively that which they already have. New crops
and new methods of cultivation raise output even more, so that
output per person is greater than if there had been no increase
in demand. With humans, scarcity is the mother of abundance.
When people want more usable land they just go out and create
it. Take India: from 1951 to 1971 cultivated land was increased
by about 20 percent. More impressively, the amount of
irrigated land was increased by 25 percent between 1949-50
and 1960-61, and then by another 27 percent between
1961-65 and 1975. Even now India is not densely populated.
Measured by the number of persons per hectare of arable land,
Japan and Taiwan - hardly examples of starving populations -
are about five times as densely populated. With muscle and
imagination man brings usable land into existence on demand,
and neither the sea nor the desert can stop him: everyone has
beard of Holland's reclamation of land from the sea; Israel
furnishes an instructive example for those who face the barren
desert. The Israels are reclaiming the Negev desert for farming
and for about 1 million people to live in. The once relatively dry
Negev desert is being brought back to life by making the most
of little water. Rainwater is recycled, thousands of acres of
plastic are used to slow evaporation, and water in precise
amounts is delivered to the roots of each plant by a system of
plastic tubes with holes in -'trickle irrigation'. Further expansion
will necessitate the use of underground water, which is salty -
very uncongenial to ordinary crops, but not to the salt-tolerant
ones that the Israelis are creating. A desert-tolerant but tasty
kind of cattle is also on the menu. One step in this direction is
the 'goabex', a cross between a goat and a camel.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that there are
in the world 3.19 thousand million hectares of arable land lying
idle. Four times that now being harvested. Brazil alone, with
about 3 million square miles of unused largely fertile land, could
feed three times the current population of the earth. Tropical
lands allow multiple cropping. If this is taken into account, that
fourfold potential increase in arable land becomes a tenfold
increase. But as Holland and Israel show even these untapped
potentials do not set an upper limit to the amount of food that
could be produced. Food, that is what we are interested in, not
soil or the total quantity of land. To produce it, all that is
required is some space and some imagination. Through- out the
1950s, America, the UK, Austria, and the Netherlands saw
their agricultural output rise while the absolute amount of their
land under cultivation fell. Some methods of producing food
need very little land and no soil at all. Single cell protein - a
foodstuff with all eight essential amino acids that is made from
the cellulose in rubbish, paper, wood or agricultural waste - is
produced in factories each with a capacity of 100,000 tons per
year. SCP has a high protein content - up to 5 1%, compared
with 42% for soybean, and can be produced at half the cost of
soybean. (New Scientist, 28 November 1974, p 639)

Simon pointed out that the number of people working in
agriculture has declined dramatically. But it would not be
surprising if in future less and less of the Earth's surface was
devoted to an ever growing level of food production. The
popular nightmare of a growing population wresting less and
less food out of an ever shrinking quantity of land is just that - a
bad dream.

When population density rises it becomes profitable to build
more roads and systems of communication, which in turn boost
economic development. This idea was behind Australia's policy
of encouraging immigration. We have heard how much of the
horror of the famine in Africa is due to poor transportation.
When people are so thinly spread over the land, as in Africa,
there is little incentive to build roads. Most villages in India
cannot be reached by motor transport. In advanced agricultural
countries there are from 3-4 miles of farm-to-market road per
hectare of arable land. This puts India's paltry figure of 0.7
miles well into the shade. The same sparseness of roads also
affects Malaya (0.8 miles), and the Philippines (about one mile).

No "fine tuning" Thanks

There is no magic population growth rate. Whether a low,
moderate, or high birth rate will maximise future income
depends on the economic conditions of the country and the age
structure of its population. But contrary to popular wisdom
there are realistic circumstances under which even an extremely
high birth rate would raise future income the most (though there
are conditions under which a very high birth rate does worst
economically).

Two conclusions, however, are unconditional: a declining
population always does badly economically in the long-run;
whereas all birth rates above the replacement level raise future
income. As for the typical less developed country, Simon found
that in the long-run (75- 100 years) a moderate birthrate does
better than either a low or high birthrate.

These findings must be seen in the proper perspective lest the
model on which they are based is taken as a breakthrough for
those who delight in "fine-tuning" the most personal aspects of
our lives. In the short run a child is, of course, a financial
burden, but clearly most people think the happiness that a child
brings them is worth the cost. People are prepared to sacrifice
a higher monetary income to have a child. The amount they are
prepared to sacrifice depends on their values and the
non-monetary costs and incentives that they face, factors of
individual circumstance, which are not only unpredictable by
any bureaucrat but also can never be fully specified even by the
individuals concerned. Simon's findings in any case concern
only the averages of individual income and family size. And
clearly the same average of births and income can be realised
by many different permutations of individual family
circumstances. The pretensions of the would-be manipulator of
birthrates founder on the rock of individual differences. If there
is any "fine tuning" to be done, each family itself will manage
splendidly, thank you. If we are faced with a declining birthrate
need the state intrude and attempt to boost it by, say, imposing
a 5% increase in income tax on persons who are not married
before they are 25 years old (as is done in Rumania)? No. A
declining birthrate means that people (on average) prefer fewer
children and more of the goods - pecuniary and non-pecuniary
- that they would have had to sacrifice if they had not had fewer
children. Furthermore, if a declining birthrate does reduce
income this will be self-correcting, as people will start to have
more children at a lower income.

It is now time to lay to rest both Malthus and his troubled ghost,
in the knowledge that population growth does not impede but
actually contributes to Man's rise from poverty and hardship.

The more people there are, free to exploit their own and the
earth's resources, the easier it is to feed them.

But still the citadel of
orthodoxy stands.
One of its principal
architects was Paul
Ehrlich. Ehrlich had
a taste for the
dramatic. To this he
added a flair for
picking figures out of
thin air and -
abracadabra: "... a
minimum of ten
million people, most
of them children, will
starve to death during
each year of the
1970s."

The popular idea that
most babies in less
developed countries
must be unwanted
because their parents
do not connect birth
with sex or because
they cannot control
their primitive urges
is nonsense.

As Thomas Sowell
points out (Classical
Economics
Reconsidered, P.U.P.
1974, p 87), since
nearly all animals
and plants reproduce
in much shorter
periods of time and
with more numerous
offspring than man,
the theoretical
maximum growth rate
of food is of a higher
geometric order than
that of the human
population.

True, as income
increases from a low
level, the birthrate
increases. But there
comes a point at
which a further
increase in income
leads to a decline in
the birthrate. The
lowest birthrates are
in the more developed
countries, where food
is most abundant.

Hands up those who
in the 1970s watched
each year on
television a minimum
of 10 million people
starve to death.

But, Johnson points
out, for the entire
20th century to the
present, there have
been probably
between only 12 and
15 million famine
deaths. Many, if not
the majority, were due
to deliberate
government policy,
official
mismanagement, or
war - not to serious
crop failure.

The magic formula for
these stories is to pick
a doubling time and -
as if people bred like
flies - simply project it
and conclude that
within a startlingly
short time the Earth
would be completely
carpeted by a 2,000
storey building
packed with people.

We can only surmise
that the figure was
discerned in a cloudy
crystal ball that is
Ehrlich's head.

As the publication of
his and Carl Sagan's
book (Nuclear
Winter, Sidgwick &
Jackson 1985) shows,
where there's a
prophet there's a
profit.

As industrialisation
progressed, children
became less important
to parents as extra
hands to work on the
farm and as support
in old age. At the
same time they
became a financial
drag - expensive to
raise and educate ...
people just wanted to
have fewer children.

When the human
population is seen as
a sort of mathematical
monster,
developments that
would strike the
non-mathematical as
magnificent
improvements in
man's lot are instead
seen as food for the
beast.

It took the 70 years
between 1830 and
1900 for average life
expectancy in Europe
to increase from 40
years to 50 years. Due
largely to the
development of
insecticides and
drugs in more
developed countries
(MDCS) during the
1940s, the same
increase in LDCs took
only 15 years between
1950 and 1965.

In Chapter V the Club
concluded that if
stabilising policies
with the above as
necessary ingredients
are not implemented
before the year 2000,
there will he a
catastrophic collapse
of food production,
industry, and
population sometime
in the next century.

To us simple folk the
distinction between
'non-growing' and
'zero growth' is
clearly the preserve of
the erudite.

That a prediction is
propounded as a lie
does not make it false.
The world is not
always as it seems,
even to a liar.

The significance of
the Club of Rome's
mendacity is that it
has impeded the
search for the truth,
caused unnecessary
worry and despair,
and must lead us to
conclude that any
further empirical
reports from them
should be given less
weight in the
controversy (not-
withstanding that any
purely logical points
or criticisms that they
might offer are
unaffected).

It is strange how
those who pretend to
an enlightened view
of the world that
scorns the immediate
while embracing the
long term prophecy,
are the most
short-sighted when it
comes to propaganda.
But in propaganda
patience and honesty
are the best policy.

One of the crucial
assumptions of their
model of the world, a
long term increase in
the scarcity of
minerals, has no
historical backing. As
Julian Simon points
out, if mineral
resources had indeed
become more scarce
their prices would
have increased. On
the contrary, their
prices on average
have been sinking
since as long ago as
we can ascertain,
indicating that they
are now less scarce
than they were.

Even these refined
models, Simon points
out, are contradicted
by both historical and
cross sectional
studies. There is no
straight- forward
correlation between
population growth
rate and per capita
income. Strangely, in
the light of our
preconceptions,
Simon and Gobin
found that there is a
positive correlation
between population
density and per
capita income. (

Many services,
because they are
demanded by such a
small proportion of
the population, could
not be supported by a
smaller population
(how many novelists
or osteopaths could
be supported by a
village?).

A growing population
brings with it more
Edisons and
Einsteins, who create
more and more of
these splendid tools of
the mind. They pile up
to form a mountain of
wealth that is
available for the use
of future generations,
whose problems are
thus made more
amenable to solution.
No baby Edison ever
deprives a future
person of an ounce of
bread, but makes him
richer and more
secure instead.

The once relatively
dry Negev desert is
being brought back
to life by making the
most of little water.
Rainwater is recycled,
thousands of acres of
plastic are used to
slow evaporation,
and water in precise
amounts is delivered
to the roots of each
plant by a system of
plastic tubes with
holes in -'trickle
irrigation'.

Brazil alone, with
about 3 million
square miles of
unused largely fertile
land, could feed three
times the current
population of the
earth.

Through- out the
1950s, America, the
UK, Austria, and the
Netherlands saw their
agricultural output
rise while the
absolute amount of
their land under
cultivation fell..

But it would not be
surprising if in future
less and less of the
Earth's surface was
devoted to an ever
growing level of food
production. The
popular nightmare of
a growing population
wresting less and less
food out of an ever
shrinking quantity of
land is just that - a
bad dream.

Two conclusions,
however, are
unconditional: a
declining population
always does badly
economically in the
long-run; whereas all
birth rates above the
replacement level
raise future income.

The more people there
are, free to exploit
their own and the
earth's resources, the
easier it is to feed
them..